Welcome to my echo chamber post.
As others have said: I love the regularity of the flash; thank you PodCastle for being faithful in this regard. I liked this piece, though as people have pointed out, it didn't really score on the originality scale. Still, I thought the imagery was vivid, and I liked all the tactile stuff in the story. I liked the obscuring mechanism of fog and smoke, used as a motif. I like the exploration of what it means to be a ghost, and to be dead. I especially liked the protag's interpretation that the living and dead are no different. That's definitely a non-western view of death, and it was intriguing to me. I have to admit a slight letdown at the ending, but came out of the story glad I'd heard it, so I'm not going to call foul on that. I love how consistently PC pimps the forums (wait, maybe no one else said that upthread. I am first with something? Woo!).
I know that at this point Rachel's going to feel like it's a battering, because it's hard to read so many people saying the same thing and not feel overwhelmed, but I, too, would prefer story analyses to come AFTER the story, if at all. This one in particular felt a little strong on didacticism, and I know it's not meant to, but it's a lot of blah blah blah standing between me and my story and it makes me itchy and impatient and not particularly teachable. For flash especially, I think it's a mistake to have a long introduction. PP rarely has one at all, and I think that method works (whoa, look at me, praising something PP does even though I've sworn off that podcast for the time being). I don't know if it's meant to build anticipation or something like that, but if so, it's not functioning that way for me.